Solid 2014 Schedule

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Create your own schedule using the personal scheduler. Mark the Sessions, Keynotes, and Events to attend by clicking on the calendar icon next to each listing. Then click on personal schedule below to generate your customized schedule.

Jon Bruner and Joi Ito, Solid Program Chairs, welcome you to the first day of the conference.

9:20am-9:35am (15m)

Intelligent Machines are Different

Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics)

In the old days software seemed pretty deterministic. If you ran your program 10 times it got the same answer all ten times. Once software was connected to the internet however, the results became less deterministic. Apart from network delays...

9:35am-9:50am (15m)

Making Machines that Make

Nadya Peek (MIT Center for Bits and Atoms)

How can you rapidly prototype new computer controlled tools? With modular and reusuable subcomponents (including kinematic systems, sensor/actuator interfaces, motion control, and machine interfaces), we enable non-experts to design and build not just new parts, but new machines. Combined with digital fabrication tools, we can produce a whole new range of machines that make.

9:50am-10:05am (15m)

Google[x]'s Focus on the Physical World

Astro Teller (Google)

Using examples from Google[x] projects, the talk will explain why Google[x] has this focus on atoms, not just bits, how that choice has shaped the culture and efforts at Google[x], what additional challenges this focus creates for us, and some of the general directions we see for the future of hardware.

10:05am-10:10am (5m)
Sponsored

Time to Get Personal: Enabling a Human-centric Approach to IoT

Alec Saunders (QNX Software Systems)

Data is important, but customers matter. Until IoT can deepen customer relationships and enrich user experiences, it won’t live up to its true potential. The challenges, of course, are many when businesses need to tap into massive amounts of data and extract meaningful information, without compromising security.

10:10am-10:20am (10m)

Real Time Robot Dance Party

Carin Meier (Cognitect), Peter Shanley

In this fun, energetic talk, we will explore way to control multiple robots in real time. Roombas sway to gentle computer generated music, while Spheros balls roll with flashing lights. This robot jam will culminate in spectacular finale when the AR Drones fly in to join the dance.

10:20am-10:30am (10m)

Plenary

To be confirmed

11:00am-11:20am (20m)

Vision-Driven: Beyond Tangible Bits, Towards Radical Atoms

Hiroshi Ishii (MIT Media Lab)

I will present the trajectory of our vision-driven design research from Tangible Bits towards Radical Atoms, and a variety of interaction design projects that were presented and exhibited in Media Arts, Design, and Science communities.

11:20am-11:30am (10m)

Are Robots the New Black?

Andra Keay (Silicon Valley Robotics)

Emerging technologies have a lot of hype to live up to before reaching their full potential. What goes wrong and what goes right for robot startups as they come to market. Or should we call them smart connected devices, the internet of things or simply appliances?

11:30am-11:40am (10m)

The Future is Solid – Radical Mechanisms of Economic Change

Kipp Bradford (The Kippworks)

Kipp Bradford, Kippworks

11:40am-11:55am (15m)

Robotics & The Natural Language of Creatives

Tobias Kinnebrew (Bot & Dolly)

Bot & Dolly is a creative studio composed of Artists and Engineers. We leverage the power of the friction between those two disciplines to drive the engine of our creative process. This integration is a force multi-plier and propels us to innovate at the technology level from the perspective of an idea rather than an execution.

11:55am-12:05pm (10m)

Beyond Gadgets: Interactive Everything

Ivan Poupyrev (Google)

In this talk I will argue that the success of the computing of the future where digital code, data and physical realities are seamlessly merged will depend on inventing intuitive, fluid interfaces for to the physical world on a very large scale. I will also present some of my research in this direction including sensing, actuation, energy harvesting and the fine art of growing digital plants.

12:05pm-12:20pm (15m)

The Machine Whisperers: Why Our Machines’ Inner Lives Are the Key to the Next Economic Revolution

Beth Comstock (GE)

Beth Comstock, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, GE

12:20pm-12:30pm (10m)

Welcome back citizens of Weblandia

Jim Stogdill (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)

Jim Stogdill, O'Reilly Media

1:45pm-2:05pm (20m)
Companies

How to Build a Great Hardware Brand

Rob Coneybeer (Shasta Ventures)

Branding a world-class hardware company is dramatically different than for software, Web, or mobile companies. Branding begins with storytelling, and crafting compelling stories for hardware requires a fresh perspective.

2:05pm-2:25pm (20m)
Companies

Beyond the Early Adopter, When IOT Cracks Mainstream

Alex Hawkinson (SmartThings)

Alex Hawkinson, CEO and co-founder of SmartThings, will discuss key advancements that will take the “Internet of Things” beyond early adopters and into mainstream homes. He’ll discuss this from a hardware and software perspective, providing insight to the inevitable challenges ahead. The presentation will also include a demo of the SmartThings product to highlight the everyday user’s experience.

2:35pm-2:55pm (20m)
Companies

Platforms Accelerating the Hardware Revolution: From Idea to Product OR What You Need to Know about Scaling a Hardware Company

Hardware is hot, but moving from idea to product is a lot of hard
work. Featuring Upverter, Indiegogo, Tindie, and VC Boris Wertz, the
panel will address the lifecycle and platforms that hardware companies
need to scale: from design, through fundraising, sales, manufacturing,
and delivery.

2:55pm-3:15pm (20m)
Companies

Building a Hardware MVP

Ben Einstein (Bolt)

Building a minimum viable product for a software product is easy. But what about hardware? When there are prototypes to be assembled and parts to be manufactured, building a good MVP is not so straightforward. Learn a few tips about building MVPs better and faster to improve your product.

3:25pm-3:45pm (20m)
Companies

Designing for Your First 1000 True Fans

Amanda Peyton (Etsy), Kuan Luo (Grand St.)

Friends, co-workers and crowdfunding backers are certainly your supporters, but not your True Fans. The True Fans (credit to a Kevin Kelly blog post for the term) are the people who will evangelize your product to strangers, and superusers who you may or may not know. This talk is about designing your product for this group. If you want to start a movement, it begins with 1000 true fans.

3:45pm-4:05pm (20m)
Companies

Closing the Data-Loop

Daniel Koffler (Rio Tinto Alcan)

Closing the data-loop; how Rio Tinto is managing the convergence of software, data and industrial physical assets.

4:50pm-5:10pm (20m)
Foundations

Intelligent Connectivity. It’s What’s Next.

Laurie Yoler (Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.)

It may seem like the whole world is connected, but the revolution has only just begun. Qualcomm SVP of business development Laurie Yoler will discuss how intelligent connectivity will transform industries like education, health care, transportation, smart cities, and more. She’ll provide insights about inventing at scale, and the profound challenges — and opportunities ahead.

5:10pm-5:30pm (20m)
Foundations

How Do We Create A Connected World?

Sean Carey (Helium)

The technology world is quickly moving into an era of devices being able to interact with each other. This interaction will happen in a simple, seamless, and effective way. Some people call this the Internet of Things. We call it an omnipresent internet.

5:40pm-6:00pm (20m)
Foundations

Life: Sustainable Programmable Bottom-up Manufacturing

Andrew Hessel (Autodesk Inc.)

Living systems are manufacturing masters, capable of producing tremendous complexity from molecular components in a robust and reproducible way, and fully programmable with the digital code of DNA. The future of manufacturing will see a shift from making to growing the things humanity needs to thrive, both here on earth and off-world.

6:00pm-6:20pm (20m)
Foundations

edgertronic™ - A Microscope for Time

Michael Matter (Sanstreak Corp), Juan Pineda (Edgertronic)

The human eye is pretty remarkable, but sometimes it can use a little help: If you want to see Jupiter’s moons, you’ll need a telescope. Protozoa in a drop of water requires a microscope. To see a light bulb shattering, you better have a high speed camera.

6:20pm-7:30pm (1h 10m)
Events

Demo Pavilion Reception / Bot & Dolly Demo

Grab a drink, mingle with fellow conference participants, and see the latest technologies and products from leading companies in the Solid space. Also featured will be a demo by design and engineering studio Bot & Dolly, at the end of the reception.

1:45pm-2:05pm (20m)
Society

A Lamppost Is A Thing Too

Tom Armitage (Freelance)

"Connected Object" brings to mind white consumer goods with an Ethernet sockets or Wifi antennas. Perhaps a better model for understanding what connected objects can and could be is the furniture of a city. Drawing on a public project that made an entire city talk via SMS, this talk looks at this particular space as a place to understand and design relationships with connected objects.

2:05pm-2:25pm (20m)
Society

tinyPipes: An Electrical Utility that Goes Where the Grid Can't

Alex Hornstein (TinyPipes)

TinyPipes is an electrical utility that provides power to off-grid areas. The utility is a collection of solar panels that can be installed all over the world, but are all connected to the internet through a local cellular network. Our users buy electricity that the panels generate - in that sense, we're just like a normal utility, but we reach places that no other utility can go.

2:35pm-2:55pm (20m)
Society

Data Vehicles for Open Mobility in Cities

Kamal Farah (MIT Media Lab)

Open Mobility transcends spatial boundaries in cities, enabling simultaneous movement in physical and virtual networks. Unlike traditional automobiles for urban spaces, Data Vehicles are designed for real time correlation of geographic locations with online content. This talk explores designing Data Vehicles for Open Mobility, and emergent points of interest at the intersection of data and cities.

2:55pm-3:15pm (20m)
Society

Democratizing Innovation through Open Hardware

gabriella levine (OSHWA (Open Source Hardware Association))

Open-source hardware allows others to use, modify, and distribute hardware based on the original design. This talk will address the meaning of DIY & the Open Hardware movement, explore its history, the rise of OSHWA (open source hardware association), and the implications of sharing technology to facilitate local community approaches to environmental exploration and preservation.

3:25pm-3:45pm (20m)
Society

Invention is a Weather System

Shawn Frayne (Looking Glass Hong Kong Ltd.)

Invention is not a single event that flares and then is gone. It's a weather system, where the best ideas float between often very different fields over long stretches of time. I'll be running through the tenuous connections that link a styrofoam packing peanut killer to a water disinfection system, which led to a non-turbine wind harvester that created a new art medium of volumetric printing.

3:45pm-4:05pm (20m)
Society

Manufacture NY: A New Model for Fashion Fabrication & Research

Amanda Parkes (Columbia University)

Manufacture NY is a newly developed hybrid fashion incubator, factory, and research laboratory in NYC dedicated to providing independent fashion and textile designers with the resources to create sustainable lines that are locally produced through the integration of novel material and manufacturing paradigms.

4:50pm-5:10pm (20m)
Society

The Collision of Privacy, Regulation, and Physical Computing

Christopher Clearfield (System Logic)

Physical computing increases our footprint in digital world by allowing information to flow directly to and from our devices, rather than requiring explicit input from us. While this provides tremendous potential and capabilities, it also requires consumers, designers, and regulators to carefully consider the nature of privacy, security, and regulation in a connected world.

5:10pm-5:30pm (20m)
Society

Blush: Designing a Social Wearable

Noah Feehan (New York Times R&D Lab)

What does it look like when our devices stop merely listening to us, and start becoming part of our conversations? How can the technology that lives closest to our bodies actively enhance our relationships with others?
Introducing Blush, a wearable that highlights the moments when my online interests and offline behaviors overlap.

5:40pm-6:00pm (20m)
Society

Disrupting Space: Planet Labs From Garage to Orbit

Chris Boshuizen (Planet Labs)

Planet Labs has pioneered the concept of “agile aerospace,” demonstrating a new approach for getting satellites into space. With 32 satellites currently in orbit, Chris, Planet Lab’s CTO, will recount how they went from prototyping in their garage to manufacturing in downtown San Francisco.

6:00pm-6:20pm (20m)
Society

Pardon Our Dust: Bringing Air Quality Sensors and Data to the People Through Fab Labs

Matthew Schroyer (DroneJournalism.org)

When sensors are dirt cheap, yet air is dirtier than ever, how can you make a difference? Fueled by rapid prototyping and community fab labs, a journalist’s quest for data leads to a global initiative to cheaply quantify cancer-causing particulate matter. Case study and demo covers the DustDuino project from a toxic tire fire, to testing kitty litter, to training journalists for global deployment.

1:45pm-2:05pm (20m)
Foundations

A Crowd-Sourced Mechanism To Optimize Garbage Pickup In Public Areas Using Bluetooth 4 And BLE Enabled Devices Like The iPhone

samrat saha (Laughlin Constable)

This is an introduction into the possibilities that Bluetooth 4 has opened up in terms of sensor integration, crowd-sourcing and mobile devices. It demonstrates that not everything that is potentially useful needs to be sexy. Something as mundane as garbage pickup can be optimized to be more friendly to the environment and raise community participation using a mobile device and a brief walk by.

2:05pm-2:25pm (20m)
Foundations

UX in IoT: A Collaborative Approach

Tom Metcalfe (rain cloud)

User-experience is as important to Internet-connected objects as software and hardware. Digital technologies need to be inconspicuous; and experiences nuanced through haptic interactions with physical objects, beyond the screen.
This talk will highlight the importance collaboration, traditional object design; materiality and the stories objects mediate, bring to UX with connected-objects.

2:35pm-2:55pm (20m)
Foundations

Lessons Learned Building the Hue Cloud

Korjan Wieringen (Q42)

With the launch of Philips Hue launched, people not only got tunable whites and great color, but could also turn their lights off away from home, or as such, have the lights respond to any internet event. This session talks about the road to launch, the up- and downside of certain architecture choices and what happens when all the Hue bridges fallback to polling the Cloud platform every 2 seconds.

2:55pm-3:15pm (20m)
Foundations

The Rise of Wearables: Innovations and Impacts

Tom Wesselman (Plantronics)

This session will outline the core technologies fueling the rise of wearable tech and cover the expected impact these devices will have - in both business and consumer scenarios - when sensing environments become commonplace.

3:25pm-3:45pm (20m)
Foundations

Environmental Impacts of 3D Printing

Jeremy Faludi (UC Berkeley)

Myths abound on the environmental impacts of 3D printing: Will it really eliminate waste? Will it eliminate shipping? Will it create more problems than it solves? This talk will summarize the first comprehensive life-cycle assessment ever to compare 3D printing with traditional machining. It will dispel some myths and confirm others, ending with guidelines for how to make 3D printing greener.

3:45pm-4:05pm (20m)
Foundations

Announcing a Product Before It's Ready - Stories From the Frontlines

Jason Johnson (August Home Inc.)

Having thousands of preorders is exciting and validating; however, delivering a product that meets or exceeds customer expectations is a whole other story. The creator of the August Smart Lock will share stories from concept to creation. This talk will speak to some of the pros and cons of decisions made in the product development process.

4:50pm-5:10pm (20m)
Companies

Designing IoT Services with ‘Cadences' in Mind

Zachary Pousman (THINK Interactive), Michelle Berryman (Think, Inc.)

This talk will present a design framework for thinking about cadences and examples to show how they apply to the Internet of Things. This talk is aimed at product owners and designers, and you’ll leave with deep understanding of where and how cadences matter, how to model cadences, and what design (and evaluation) steps to take to deliver compelling IoT applications...

Since its inception, our interface with video games has been trapped behind a screen. In 2013, Anki completely upended that model with a mix of real-world gameplay, along with A.I. and robotics; but the debut of Anki Drive showed the world what’s possible when you take technology out of the labs and into consumer products - a fusion of the virtual and real worlds.

6:00pm-6:20pm (20m)
Companies

How Lockitron Successfully Raised $2.2 Million on Its Own Crowdfunding Platform and How You Can Too

Cameron Robertson (Lockitron)

Entrepreneur Magazine recently profiled the 100 most successful crowdfunding campaigns in the last year. Two of the top five hardware campaigns launched on a self-hosted platform. In this session, learn how companies like Lockitron, Tile, Soylent, Thalmic, and Coin were able to take advantage of self-hosting to raise millions in pre-orders and why others are turning to solutions like these.

1:45pm-2:05pm (20m)
Machines

Humanizing the Industrial Internet

Michael DelGaudio (Google)

Connecting infrastructure via sensors and wireless networks is cheap and easy, but understanding the human motivations, desires and values underpinned by the Internet of Things is a challenge. This talk explores the evolving Industrial Internet through the lens of human behavior, using frog case studies as examples while offering methodologies and frameworks for design teams.

2:05pm-2:25pm (20m)
Machines

Designing Cohesively Across Product Components

Lauren Von Dehsen (R/GA)

Smart products are using networks of software components to create meaningful product experiences layered over innovative hardware. With firmware, apps, and web applications all converging in one experience, the product design team no longer has the luxury of focusing on a single software property. This talk will discuss a shift in process to accommodate cross-component design.

2:35pm-2:55pm (20m)
Machines

6D Pose Tracking for VR

Dov Katz (Oculus VR)

VR is coupled with our embodiment more than any existing interface. A compelling and immersive VR experience requires that our interactions with the physical world are mapped precisely and with low latency onto the virtual environment. This creates a variety of challenges, including hardware design, processing multi modal sensor data, and filtering. This talk will focus on our current solution...

Over the past 30 years cars have become technically sophisticated, but the driver experience has remained much the same. Automatic Labs’ Chief Product Officer, tells the story of Automatic’s creation, focusing on the delights and difficulties of shipping a product that is equal parts hardware, software, and cloud services.

3:25pm-3:45pm (20m)
Machines

Using Microinteractions to Get from Prototype to Product

Dan Saffer (Saffervescence Inc.)

Once you have a prototype, what’s often missing is the polish that will turn your idea into a product that people will actually use and love. It’s the small details, the microinteractions, that enable the kind of positive attention and adoption that companies like Flip and Nest received.

The gap between strong concept and final product is huge. Tools and methods that help you quickly create dynamic prototypes are critical for competitiveness in the evolving IoT marketplace. We’ll present our approach to co-designing hardware and software, and share lessons learned developing an open source prototyping kit to help inventors rapidly design and test new consumer electronics.

4:50pm-5:10pm (20m)
Machines

Mind the Gap: Designing Interaction Between Connected Devices

Josh Clark (Big Medium)

There's untapped magic in the gaps between gadgets. Explore a rich trove of examples of the passive cues and active gestures that make us wizards slinging bits between connected devices. Designing this new class of physical, sensor-based interaction is not a challenge of technology but of imagination. The technology is already here, in our pockets, handbags, and living rooms. Learn to use it now.

IDEO developed Noam to support the design of increasingly complex hardware + software prototypes. It is ideal for creating quick, iterative, flexible digital-physical experiences that require communication between disparate platforms. While the need for robust product development continues, we have found Noam can dramatically increase the speed and likelihood of arriving at the right idea.

5:40pm-6:00pm (20m)
Machines

Future Radios: Prototyping with Stickers, Cardboard and Electronics

Andrew Nicolaou (BBC), Dan Nuttall (BBC)

BBC Research and Development’s open radio prototyping platform aims to encourage audiences to engage with, understand and influence the devices in their world. This session will introduce our experiments with hackable connected radios and show how we’re trying to empower people to build devices that are uniquely theirs.

6:00pm-6:20pm (20m)
Machines

Designing Bespoke Interactive Devices in 10 Weeks

Björn Hartmann (UC Berkeley)

Advances in software and digital fabrication technology have brought down the cost, time, and expertise required to create interconnected interactive devices. This talk presents a broad survey of connected products that students design an implement in the CITRIS Invention Lab at UC Berkeley, and the tools that make these rapid explorations possible.

1:45pm-2:05pm (20m)
Tools

MQTT - standards-based plumbing for the Internet of Things

Andy Piper (Twitter)

Learn about MQTT - the lightweight messaging protocol, standardised at OASIS, that is ideal for connecting small and constrained devices whilst minimising network overhead. Open Source, simple, and easy to use, MQTT makes a great alternative to HTTP when composing the Internet of Things.

2:05pm-2:25pm (20m)
Tools

Open Source Hardware...What About The Design Tools?

Chris Gammell (Parts.io, by Supplyframe)

The rise of open source hardware (OSHW) has been an important factor in many of the advances in the Internet of Things. Why haven't the tools creating the OSHW projects been open source? We'll take a look at many of the newer (or updated) ones and how they can be put to good use in the future of IoT devices and more generally in modern electronics designs.

2:35pm-2:55pm (20m)
Tools

G28 Machine UX, You're Drunk

Mike Estee (Other Machine Co)

The history of machine interaction design is tied up in the past. For many decades these design patterns have met the needs of their commercial users.
As machine operators start to look like everyday people, we're going to need to rethink how we all interact with these new digital manufacturing tools to enable a much greater number of people to participate in the digital manufacturing economy.

2:55pm-3:15pm (20m)
Tools

IoT and RESTful Hardware - What We've Learned from Two Years Treating Motion as REST

Alden Hart (Synthetos)

IoT physical objects beg to be described as RESTful resources. This talk discusses how to use REST to describe and manipulate hardware, and uses the TinyG JSON resource model as a field-tested example of applying RESTful principles to physical objects.

3:25pm-3:45pm (20m)
Tools

Bringing to Life Wearable Ideas and Rapid Prototyping using Arduino

Moe Tanabian (Samsung Mobile)

This talk touches both the Technical side and UX side of building Wearable devices. It also discusses how to bring Wearable ideas to life quickly using cost effective and ready to use Arduino based Sensors and components.

Expand your bandwidth and do more with wireless! The “internet of things” is putting “wireless into everything”, but designing hardware and software on the RF side of the board can require arcane knowledge. Puff Mobile is a new open source emag app that allows users with little to no wireless knowledge to understand, design, and build hardware to get more from both commercial and DIY projects.

What will testing tools of physical products look like in the future?
Software developers prefer highly automated processes to test their code. However, manual testing is often the only option available when a new technology first emerges. This talk will discuss what the physical world might inherit from the software world of test automation. Who will win the testing war: robots or humans?

5:40pm-6:00pm (20m)
Tools

Build Your Own Whole-Data-Center Smart Meter and Climate Control

Ralf Muehlen (Internet Archive)

We'll show how to build a production quality sensor and relay network to automate data centers. What used to take exotic, complex and expensive analog hardware (e.g. transfer switches) can now be built with a network of simple, inexpensive sensors and actuators joined together with cloud-based software. We'll show how to confidently go beyond monitoring to triggering physical changes.

6:00pm-6:20pm (20m)
Tools

A Robot in Every Browser: Simulation and Programming in the Cloud

Brian Gerkey (Open Source Robotics Foundation)

DARPA's latest Grand Challenge added a new wrinkle: a simulation stage. The Virtual Robotics Challenge, a key stage in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, took place in July 2013 when 26 teams competed within simulated disaster response scenarios. This session highlights how Gazebo, the open source robotics simulator, was built for the DRC in the short term and longer term for the robotics community.

10:30am-11:00am (30m)

Break: Morning Break

4:05pm-4:50pm (45m)
Events

Afternoon Break / Solid 2014 Hardware Startup Showcase

In this first-ever Solid, we’ll be inviting the best-of-the-best hardware startups innovating in the realm of the networked physical world to demonstrate their products or services. The showcase is available during lunch, breaks and the Demo Pavilion Reception.

12:30pm-1:45pm (1h 15m)
Events

Lunch / Solid 2014 Hardware Startup Showcase

In this first-ever Solid, we’ll be inviting the best-of-the-best hardware startups innovating in the realm of the networked physical world to demonstrate their products or services. The showcase is available during lunch, breaks and the Demo Pavilion Reception.